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When two immortals are sent to go through trial and tribulations as a punishment for having an illicit affair, the god Song Yao Yuanjun, a man who had a fluke ascension to immortality, is sent to oversee their punishment.

However, things aren’t as easy as Song Yao hopes them to be, never mind that no one told him in advance that he would need to make it into the bed of one of the punished immortals.

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So he was afraid that this immortal lord would develop feelings for Tianshu after channeling a few mouthfuls of air to him. I yawned. “Don’t worry. When I was mortal, a fortune teller said I was doomed to suffer a fate of eternal solitude. I’m destined to a hundred lifetimes without a wife, and even if I were to reincarnate a hundred times, no one would take a fancy to me. Have I told you? Before I ascended to the Heavenly Court…”

Hengwen mumbled, “Mmhm, you’ve said this many times…,” turned over, and fell silent.

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Thoughts

When Peach Blossom Debt and The Imperial Uncle, both by Da Feng Gua Guo, were announced, I decided I would get both of them. While unfamiliar with the author, Peach Flower House has published among others Golden Terrace volumes 1 and 2 and Little Mushroom: Judgement Day, which I like a lot.

Between the two titles, I thought Peach Blossom Debt sounded more like something I may enjoy, based on the synopsis, so that’s why I chose to read that first.

Yes, I know, it’s a rare occasion of me actually reading about a book instead of going in without any knowledge.

(Can I get applause for writing a blurb without really knowing what I wanted to focus on and without simply rewriting the synopsis on the site or back of the book? No? Oh well… Anyway.)

Much like many of my reads in the past three to four years, this is Chinese fantasy. In this case, specifically, it’s high fantasy with gods in the mortal world, so xianxia. This book is a BL novel with some amount of drama, but what stood out to me was that it could be both quite lighthearted and have a melancholic undertone. Compared to many other stories that are heavy to read, I’d say this is very, very lightweight, at least for what I tend to read.

And I did find the comedic moments rather funny. The way Song Yao was tossed into the situations due to circumstances, incompetence and his own mistakes, could be interesting and hilarious. It lightened the mood from getting too heavy even though some of the content certainly isn’t always comfortable to read.

The story does however burn through a larger amount of side characters with these characters being introduced every few chapters. When they have played out their role, they get cast aside, sometimes with little to no explanation as to what they were really there for. This isn’t necessarily bad writing or necessarily poor pacing, but it creates a feeling of the side characters being far more shallow and flat. It can also make keeping track of these characters more difficult as well as the more important details they do provide.

This also results in relationships feeling somewhat confusing at times because they lack context, clarity and/or exploration. It left me yearning for something else to read, and I think this added to the struggle of picking up the book whenever put down, leading to it taking months to read a book that I didn’t mind while I was actively reading.

Among the characters, I found Hengwen to be my favourite character. He’s really quite precious and honestly, the easiest to understand. I found him pretty transparent but in a good way. Other characters, while they could be easy to understand, weren’t necessarily that great. Song Yao, who narrates the story has some relatable characteristics, but I found this a rare case of reading a book in first-person to be a downside and I knew both too much and too little about Song Yao at once. I think part of the problem was that I forgot some finer details between reading sessions. Overall, I was fairly indifferent to the cast, though.

I think the story as a whole isn’t necessarily poorly written, but a variety of reasons caused me to feel apathetic and numb to it, even though I thought it was quite a fun read. It’s a very odd combination, which made the book feel like two different books rather than giving ambivalent feelings at once, and I can’t entirely connect the two very different experiences I had between reading and not reading to make one whole.

So, did this live up to expectations? Well… yes. I could have liked it more, but it wasn’t bad. I spammed Cas on LINE about sections as I read, which shows I got invested in the book. Yet, I can’t say it was good either, considering it all. It’s quite in the very middle between good and bad, not leaning one way or the other. I nearly didn’t finish the book before reviewing it because of this. I wrote a review and then decided to read the second half, so I had to rewrite the review to be more accurate. Ironically, though, most of my feelings still remain the same.

I have seen some people enjoying this, and to some degree, I certainly can understand why. But I can also understand why people wouldn’t like it at all. I can’t recommend it to anyone, really, because I don’t know who might actually like it or what similar story might have people liking it. I think that this might just be one of those stories that are either good or a letdown but you can’t say before you read the book yourself.